Dear Editor,

New Mills Hill in Goodrich once had a pleasant little flower bed at its junction with the B4229 in this area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB).

Now it has an ugly, unwanted, useless heap of soil and rubbish. A person complained and thus arrangements were made for a makeover ‘to improve visibility’.

Is this I wonder an improvement or change our village can or should be proud of?

What role, if any, does the parish council have regarding this hideous eyesore? I wonder if they could liaise with those who organised this excuse for a makeover in the interest of road safety, and ask them to direct their attention to the far more important issues in our area. For example, the lack of a warning sign when approaching the mud mound junction from the easterly direction as it is a blind junction?

Next could they turn their attention to the areas of verge approaching said junction from the east, which are on an hourly basis on most days being worn away by HGVs. These often stop as they are too large to pass each other safely and without contact. They pull onto the verge which squashes it further into pot hole land, hoot their air horns at each other.

There are also oversize delivery vans usually racing along like Lewis Hamilton, motor homes, caravans, and various other obviously unsuitable vehicles on this totally not fit for purpose stretch of road?

It’s obvious to those who overlook this stretch of road that a weight limit, or a road widening scheme (maybe divert the River Wye somewhere else would do) or traffic calming measures would all be worth considering?

But as you can all see from the pictures it is indeed a credit to our village in this AONB that we have this muddy pile of soil with its bent sign post, wonky antique signs and, of course to add insult to injury, it is topped of with the fancy new blue cycle route signs, because they obviously can’t see the huge 10ft x 8ft road direction sign 40 yards short of this massive carbuncle which used to be a nice attractive flower bed.

So I wonder, will all this silliness change when we leave the EU?

Michael Linnane